


plain (but unyielding)

by ForestBlue (forestblue)



Category: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jane Eyre Fusion, Definitely a happy ending, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Slow Burn, Some Humor, also come yell at me @ forest-blue tumblr com, also what is up with victorian novels and semicolons, and lexa doesn't die, basically it's a re-write of jane eyre, but i promise that i WILL continue it later on, but if you bug me enough about it i will update out of guilt, but super gay, clexa is endgame my dudes, even though about halfway through i'm changing the direction of it, i don't have the time and energy to do it right now, it's still gonna be long af, lemme just try to explain, ok so now that the serious part of the tags is over, okay so this is ON HIATUS for now, probably in the summer when i have more free time, this fucking novel is filled with semicolons it's killing me, when i come back to this i'll have to rewrite it so get ready for that too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-09-25 00:36:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9794555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestblue/pseuds/ForestBlue
Summary: the Jane Eyre AU you didn't know you wantedORClarke is her usual stubborn and difficult self. She yells at people. She fights people. There's some blood because she's badass. Also she's gay for Lexa (and Lexa is gay for her). Cue the bisexual pining (on Clarke's part) and life dealing them some bad hands. (spoiler alert: they all get through it just fine... I mean, except from Finn's mansion RIP)ON HIATUS for now, will probably be continued in the summer





	1. A picture of passion

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! This is the first Clexa fanfic that I'm publishing (although I have many ideas that I've written little snippets of). I don't know how many chapters this will have yet, but considering it will kind of follow the original plot of the novel (and then take an abrupt gay turn and end in rainbows) it will definitely be over 25 chapters. Anyway, I'm glad you're here, and hmu with questions, ideas, critique, asks for updates @ forest-blue.tumblr.com  
> Enjoy!

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. They had wandered, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning, but since dinner (Mrs. Frost, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

Clarke was relieved. She never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons; coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, was horrible, especially with a heart saddened by the chidings of Becca, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of her physical inferiority to Ontari, Roan and Echo Frost.

The said Ontari, Roan and Echo were now clustered around their mother in the drawing-room; she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarreling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. She had dispensed Clarke from joining the group, saying, ‘She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping her at a distance; but that until she heard from Becca, and could discover by her own observation that Clarke was endeavoring wholeheartedly to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner – something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were – she really must exclude her from privileges intended only for contented, happy little children’.

“What does Becca say I have done?” Clarke asked.

“Clarke, I don’t like whiners or questioners: besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”

A small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room; Clarke slipped in there. It contained a bookcase. Soon, Clarke got herself a volume, making sure that it was one stored with pictures. She climbed into the window-seat: gathering up her feet, she sat cross-legged, and, having drawn the red curtain nearly close, she was shrined in double retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in her view to the right; to the left were the clear panes of glass protecting, but not separating her from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of her book, Clarke studied the appearance of that winter afternoon. Afar it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.

She returned to her book – Bewick’s _History of British Birds_ , the text thereof she cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as she was, Clarke could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape. Nor could she pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with “the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space – that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights above heights, surround the pole, and concenter the multiplied rigors of extreme cold”. Clarke formed an idea of her own of these death-white realms – shadowy, like all the half comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave a significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.

She could not tell what sentiment haunted the quiet, solitary church-yard, with its inscribed headstone, its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide.

The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, she believed to be marine phantoms.

The fiend pinning down the thief’s pack behind him, Clarke passed over quickly: it was an object of terror.

So was the black, horned thing, seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a scaffold.

Each picture told a story; mysterious often to her undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting; as interesting as the tales Becca sometimes narrated on winter evenings when she chanced to be in good humor; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed the children to sit around it, and while she got up Mrs. Frost’s lace frills, and crimped her night-cap borders, fed their eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and older ballads; or (as at a later period Clarke discovered) from the pages of _Pamela_ , and _Henry, Earl of Moreland_.

With Bewick on her knee, Clarke was then happy; happy at least in her way. She feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened.

“Boo! Madam Mope!” cried the voice of Roan Frost; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty.

“Where the hell is she?” he continued. “Echo, Ontari!” (calling to his sisters), “Clarke is not here: tell mamma she is run out into the rain – bad animal!”

“It’s good that I drew the curtain,” Clarke thought; and she wished fervently he would not discover her hiding place: nor would Roan Frost have found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Ontari put her head in at the door and said at once-

“She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Roan.”

And Clarke came out immediately; for she trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by said Roan.

“What do you want?” Clarke asked, with awkward diffidence.

“Say, ‘What do you want, Master Frost?’” was the answer. “I want you to come here;” and, seating himself in an armchair, he intimated by a gesture that Clarke was to approach and stand before him.

Roan Frost was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy – four years older than Clarke, for she was but ten – large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin, thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at the table, which made him irritable, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought to have been at school, but his mother had taken him home for a month or two, “on account of his delicate health”. Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweet-meats sent him from home; but the mother’s heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that Roan’s sallowness was owing to industriousness, and, perhaps, to pining after home.

Roan did not have much affection for his mother and sisters, and had an antipathy to Clarke. He bullied and punished her – not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve Clarke had feared him, and every morsel of flesh on her bones shrunk when he came near. There were moments when she was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because she had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions: the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking her part against him, and Mrs. Frost was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse Clarke, though he did both now and then in her very presence – more frequently, however, behind her back.

Habitually obedient to Roan, Clarke came up to his chair. He spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at her as far as he could without damaging the roots. Clarke knew he would soon strike, and, while dreading the blow, she mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it. She wondered if he could read that notion in her face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly. Clarke tottered, and, on regaining her footing, retired back a step or two from his chair.

“That is for your impudence in answering mamma a while since,” said he, “and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!”

Accustomed to Roan Frost’s abuse, Clarke never had an idea of replying to it; her care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.

“What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked.

“I was reading.”

“Show the book.”

Clarke returned to the window and fetched it thence.

“You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mamma says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mamma’s expense. Now, I’ll teach you to rummage my bookshelves; for they _are_ mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows.”

She did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when she saw him lift and poise the book, and stand in act to hurl it, Clarke instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm – not soon enough, however: the volume was flung, it hit her, and she fell, striking her head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: her terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.

“Wicked and cruel boy!” she said. “You are like a murderer – you are like a slave-driver – you are like the Roman emperors!”

Clarke had read Goldsmith’s _History of Rome_ , and had formed her opinion of Nero, Caligula, &co. She had also drawn parallels in silence, which she never thought she would declare aloud.

“What?! What-” he cried, “did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mamma? But first–”

He ran headlong at her; Clarke felt him grasp her hair and her shoulder; he had closed with a desperate thing. She really saw in him a tyrant – a murderer. She felt a drop or two of blood from her head trickle down her neck, and was sensible of some pungent suffering: these sensations, for the time, predominated over fear, and she received him in frantic sort. She didn’t know very well what she did with her hands, but he called her “Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him; Ontari and Echo had run for Mrs. Frost, who was gone up stairs; she now came upon the scene, followed by Becca and the maid Abbot. The two were parted; Clarke heard the words:

“Dear! Dear! What a fury to fly at Master Roan!”

“Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!”

Then Mrs. Frost subjoined:

“Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.” Four hands were immediately laid upon Clarke, and she was carried upstairs.

 


	2. Some kind of fit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke gets locked up in the red-room. Slight humor ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter for you guys because I was too pumped up to stop writing! I'll try to get quickly to the part where Clarke gets to finally meet Lexa, and hopefully you'll enjoy those chapters better if they're filled with cute teen Clexa. Also, god, these lengthy victorian descriptions are killing my fingers.

Clarke resisted all the way: a new thing for her, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Becca and Miss Abbot were disposed to consider of her. The fact was, Clarke was a little beside herself; or rather, _out_ of herself, as the French would say; she was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered her liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, she felt resolved, in her desperation, to go all lengths.

“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot; she’s like a mad cat.”

“For shame! For shame!” cried the lady’s maid. “What shocking conduct, Miss Griffin, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’ son! Your young master!”

“Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”

“No; you are _less_ than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. There, sit down and think over your wickedness.”

By this time, they had gotten Clarke into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Frost, and had thrust her upon a stool; her impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two pairs of hands arrested her instantly.

“If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,” said Becca. “Miss Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine promptly.”

Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This preparation for bonds, and the additional humiliation it inferred, took a little of the excitement out of Clarke.

“Don’t take them off,” Clarke cried; “I will not stir.”

In guaranty whereof she attached herself to the seat by her hands.

“Mind you don’t,” said Becca; and when she had ascertained that Clarke was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of the girl; then she and Miss Abbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on Clarke’s face, as incredulous of her sanity.

“She never did so before,” Becca said at last, turning to the maid.

“But it was always in her,” was the reply. “I’ve told missis often my opinion about the child, and missis agreed with me. She’s an underhand little thing; I never saw a girl of her age with so much artifice.”

Becca did not answer; but not long after, addressing Clarke, she said,

“You ought to be aware, miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Frost. She keeps you; if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poor-house.”

Clarke had nothing to say to those words, they were not new to her; her very first recollection of existence included hints of the same kind. The reproach of her dependence had become a vague sing-song in Clarke’s ear, very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in:

“And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Frost and Master Frost, because missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none; it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.”

“What we tell you is for your good,” Becca added, in no harsh voice; “you should try to be useful and pleasant, then perhaps you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, missis will send you away, I am sure.”

“Besides,” said Miss Abbot, “God will punish her; he might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Becca, we will leave her; I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say your prayers, Miss Griffin, when you are by yourself, for if you don’t repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away.”

They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.

The bedroom was a spare chamber, very seldom slept in; almost never, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Azgeda Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained; yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed, supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls a soft fawn-color, with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs, were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample, cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as Clarke thought, like a pale throne.

The room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchens; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The housemaid alone came there on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust; and Mrs. Frost, herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where stored were diverse papers, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lay the secret of the red-room – the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

Mr. Frost had been dead nine years; it was in that chamber he breathed his last; there he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by undertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.

Clarke’s seat, to which Becca and the bitter Miss Abbot had left her riveted, was a low ottoman, near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before her; to her right there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to her left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room. Clarke was not sure whether they had locked the door; and when she dared move, she got up and went to see. Alas! Yes; no jail was ever more secure. Returning, Clarke had to cross before the looking-glass; her fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality; and the strange little figure there staring back at her, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit. Clarke thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Becca’s evening stories represented as coming up out of lone, deep hollows in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travelers. Clarke returned to her stool.

Superstition was with her at that moment, but it was not yet its hour for complete victory. Clarke’s blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing her with its bitter vigor; she had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before she quailed to the dismal present.

All Roan Frost’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in Clarke’s disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was she always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, forever condemned? Why could she never please? Why was it useless to try to win anyone’s favor? Echo, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Ontari, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent bearing, was universally indulged. Her beauty – her pink cheeks, her chestnut curls – seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. Roan, no one thwarted, much less punished, though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choices plants in the conservatory; he called his mother “old girl”, too; sometimes reviled her for her imperfect skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still “her own darling”. Clarke dared commit no fault; she strove to fulfill every duty; and she was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night.

Her head still ached and bled with the blow and fall she had received. No one had reproved Roan for wantonly striking her; and because she had turned against him to avert further irrational violence, she was loaded with general opprobrium.

“Unjust! Unjust!” said her reason, forced by the agonizing stimulus into precocious though transitory power; and resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression – as running away, of, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting herself die.

What a consternation of soul was Clarke’s that dreary afternoon! How all her brain was in tumult, and all her heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! She could not answer the ceaseless inward question – _why_ she thus suffered; now, at the distance of – she will not say how many years, she sees it clearly.

Clarke was a discord in Azgeda Hall; she was like nobody there; she had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Frost, or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If they did not love Clarke, in fact, as little did she love them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathize with one among them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment – of contempt of their judgement. She knew that, had she been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child, though equally dependent and friendless, Mrs. Frost would have endured her presence more complacently; her children would have entertained for her more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make her the scape-goat of the nursery.

Daylight began to forsake the red-room. It was past four o’clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. She heard the rain still beating continuously on the stair-case window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall. She grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then her courage sunk. Her habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of her decaying ire. All said she was wicked, and perhaps she might have been so – what thought had she been just conceiving, of starving herself to death! That certainly was a crime; and was she fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel of Azgeda church an inviting destination? In such vault, she had been told, did Mr. Frost lie buried; and led by the thought to recall his idea, Clarke dwelt on it with gathering dread. She could not remember him, but she knew that he was her own uncle – her mother’s brother; that he had taken her as a parentless infant to his house; and that, in his last moments, he had required a promise of Mrs. Frost that she would rear and maintain Clarke as one of her own children. Mrs. Frost probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, Clarke dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her kin, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie? It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.

A singular notion dawned upon Clarke. She did not doubt – had never doubted – that, if Mr. Frost had been alive, he would have treated her kindly; and now, as she sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls, occasionally, also, turning a fascinated eye toward the dimly-gleaming mirror, she began to recall what she had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and she thought Mr. Frost’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its abode – whether in the church vault, or in the unknown world of the departed – and rise before Clarke in the chamber. She wiped her tears and hushed her sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort her, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face bending over her with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, Clarke felt would be terrible if realized. With all her might she endeavored to stifle it – she endeavored to be firm. Shaking the dirty blonde curls from her eyes, she lifted her head and tried to look boldly around the dark room. At this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, Clarke asked herself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred. While she gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over her head. Clarke knows now that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, carried by someone across the lawn; but then, prepared as her mind was for horror, shaken as her nerves were from agitation, she thought the swift-darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. Her heart beat thick – her head grew hot; a sound filled her ears, which she deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near her; she was oppressed suffocated; endurance broke down; she rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned; Becca and Abbot entered.

“Miss Griffin, are you ill?” asked Becca.

“What a dreadful noise! It went quite through me!” Abbot exclaimed.

“Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!” was Clarke’s cry.

“What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?” Becca demanded again.

“Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a _ghost_ would come!” She had now gotten hold of Becca’s hand, and Becca did not snatch it away.

“She has screamed out on purpose!” declared Abbot, in some disgust. “And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here; I know her wicked, naughty tricks.”

“What is all this?” demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Frost came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily. “Abbot and Becca, I believe I gave orders that Clarke Griffin should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.”

“Miss Clarke screamed so loud, ma’am” pleaded Becca.

“Let her go,” was the only answer. “Loose Becca’s hand, child; you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer; you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then.”

“Oh aunt, have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it – let me be punished some other way! I shall be killed if–”

“Silence! This violence is almost repulsive”; and so, no doubt, she felt it. Clarke was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on the girl as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.

Becca and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Frost, impatient of Clarke’s now frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust her back and locked her in, without further parley. Clarke heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone, Clarke supposes she had some kind of fit; unconsciousness closed the scene.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to come yell at me @ forest-blue.tumblr.com


	3. A little toad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke wakes up, Jackson makes a wild appearance, and Becca seems to be the only decent person in Azgeda Hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my enthusiasm for this story is keeping me going! Also, I have a bit of free time after I just finished an assignment for uni, so there's that too. Hope you guys enjoy this one, and it won't be long until we'll be introduced to Lexa. Until then, the story is going to be pretty much exactly like in Jane Eyre. It's just a few chapters away, though!

The next thing Clarke remembered was waking up with a feeling as if she had had a frightful nightmare, and seeing before her a terrible red glare, crossed with thick, black bars. She heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water; agitation, uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror, confused her faculties. Soon, she became aware that someone was handling her; lifting her up, and supporting her in a sitting posture; and that more tenderly than she had ever been raised or held before. Clarke rested her head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.

Five minutes later, the cloud of bewilderment dissolved. Clarke knew quite well that she was in her own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire. It was night; a candle burned on the table. Becca stood at the bed-foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near Clarke’s pillow, leaning over her.

She felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when she knew that there was a stranger in the room; an individual not belonging to Azgeda, and not related to Mrs. Frost. Turning from Becca, (though her presence was far less obnoxious to Clarke than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), Clarke scrutinized the face of the gentleman; she knew him; it was Mr. Jackson, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Frost when the servants were ailing; for herself and the children she employed a physician.

“Well, who am I?” he asked.

Clarke pronounced his name, offering him at the same time her hand. He took it, smiling and saying, “We shall do very well by and by.” Then he laid her down, and addressing Becca, charged her to be very careful that Clarke was not to be disturbed during the night. Having given some further directions, and intimated that he should call again the next day, he departed, to Clarke’s grief; she felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near her pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened and her heart again sunk; inexpressible sadness weighed it down.

“Do you feel as if you should sleep, miss?” asked Becca, rather softly.

Clarke scarcely dared to answer her; for she feared the next sentence might be rough. “I will try.”

“Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?”

“No, thank you, Becca.”

“Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o’clock; but you may call me if you want anything in the night.”

Wonderful civility! It emboldened Clarke to ask a question.

“Becca, what is wrong with me? Am I ill?”

“You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room, with crying; you’ll be better soon, no doubt.”

Becca went into the housemaid’s apartment, which was near. Clarke heard her say:

“Alie, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren’t for my life be alone with that poor child tonight; she might die; it’s such a strange thing she should have that fit; I wonder if she saw anything. Missis was rather too hard.”

Alie came back with her, they both went to bed; they were whispering together for half an hour before they fell asleep. Clarke caught scraps of their conversation, from which she was able only too distinctly to infer the main subject discussed.

“Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished”–“A great black dog behind him” –“Three loud raps on the chamber door”–“A light in the church-yard just over his grave”– &co.

At last both slept; the fire and the candle went out. For Clarke, the hours of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and mind were alike strained by dread; such dread as children only can feel.

No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed the incident of the red-room; it only gave her nerves a shock, of which Clarke feels the reverberation to this day.

Next day, by noon, she was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth. She felt physically weak and broken down; but her worst ailment was an unutterable suffering, a suffering which kept drawing from her silent tears; no sooner had she wiped one salt drop from her cheek than another followed. Yet, Clarke thought, she ought to have been happy, for none of the Frosts were there; they were all gone out in the carriage with their mother. Abbot, too, was sewing in another room, and Becca, as she moved hither and tither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed every now and then a word of kindness to Clarke. This state of things should have been to Clarke a paradise of peace, accustomed as she was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless overexertion; but, in fact, her racked nerves were in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.

Becca had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly-painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, should have stirred in Clarke a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate she had often petitioned to be allowed to take in her hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on her knee, and she was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry on it. Vain favor, coming, like most other favors, long deferred and often wished for, too late! Clarke could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded. She put both plate and tart away.

Becca asked if Clarke would have a book: the word _book_ acted as a transient stimulus, and Clarke begged her to fetch _Gulliver’s Travels_ from the library. Clarke had read it again and again with delight; she considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what she found in fairy tales; for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among fox-glove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, Clarke had at length made up her mind to the sad truth that they were all gone out of England to some savage country, where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant: whereas Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in Clarke’s mind, solid parts of the earth’s surface, she undoubtedly thought that she might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with her own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep and birds, of one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in Clarke’s hand – when she turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvelous pictures the charm she had, till now, never failed to find – all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. She closed the book, which she no longer dared peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart.

Becca had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and, having washed her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds of silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet for Ontari’s doll. Meantime she sang: her song was,

“ _In the days when we went gipsying, A long time ago.”_

Clarke had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for Becca had a sweet voice – at least, she thought so. But now, though her voice was still sweet, Clarke found an indescribable sadness in its melody. Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low, very lingeringly; “A long time ago” came out like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad, this time a really doleful one:

“ _My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;_

_Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;_

_Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary_

_Over the path of the poor orphan child._

_Why did they send me so far and so lonely,_

_Up where the moors spread and gray rocks are piled?_

_Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only_

_Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child._

_Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,_

_Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild;_

_God, in his mercy, protection is showing,_

_Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child._

_Even should I fall o’er the broken bridge passing,_

_Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,_

_Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,_

_Take to his bosom the poor orphan child._

_There is a thought that for strength should avail me,_

_Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;_

_Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;_

_God is a friend to the poor orphan child._ ”

 

“Come, miss Clarke, don’t cry,” Becca said, as she finished. She might as well have said to the fire, “Don’t burn!” But how could she divine the morbid suffering to which Clarke was a prey? In the course of the morning Mr. Jackson came again.

“What, already up!” he said, as he entered the nursery. “Well, nurse, how is she?”

Becca answered that Clarke was doing very well.

“Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Clarke; your name is Clarke, is it not?”

“Yes, sir, Clarke Griffin.”

“Well, you have been crying, Miss Clarke Griffin; can you tell me what about? Have you any pain?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh! I dare say she is crying because she could not go out with missis in the carriage,” interposed Becca.

“Surely not! Why, she is too old for such pettishness.”

Clarke thought so too; and her self-esteem being wounded by the false accusation, she answered promptly, “I never cried for such a thing in my life; I hate going out in the carriage. I cry because I am miserable.”

“Oh, boo, miss!” said Becca.

The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. Clarke was standing before him; he fixed his eyes on her very steadily: his eyes were small and brown; not very bright, but Clarke dare say she would think them shrewd now; he had a good-natured looking face. Having considered her at leisure, he said-

“What made you ill yesterday?”

“She had a fall,” Becca said, again putting in her word.

“Fall! Why, that is like a baby again! Can’t she manage to walk at her age? She must be eight or nine years old.”

“I was knocked down,” was the blunt explanation jerked out of Clarke by another pang of mortified pride: “but that did not make me ill,” she added, while Mr. Jackson helped himself to a pinch of snuff.

As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rung for the servant’s dinner; he knew what it was. “That’s for you, nurse,” said he; “you can go down; I’ll give Miss Clarke a lecture till you come back.”

Becca would rather have stayed; but she was obliged to go, because punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Azgeda Hall.

“The fall did not make you ill? What did, then?” pursued Mr. Jackson, when Becca was gone.

“I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost, till after dark.”

She saw Mr. Jackson smile and frown at the same time. “Ghost! What, you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?”

“Of Mr. Frost’s ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out there. Neither Becca nor anyone else will go into it at night, if they can help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone, without a candle – so cruel that I think I shall never forget it.”

“Nonsense! And this is what makes you so miserable? Are you afraid now, in daylight?”

“No; but night will come again before long; and, besides, I am unhappy, very unhappy, for other things.”

“What other things? Can you tell me some of them?”

How much Clarke wished to reply fully to that question! How difficult it was to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they don’t know how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving her grief by imparting it, Clarke, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre, though, as far as it went, true response.

“For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters.”

“You have a kind aunt and cousins.”

Again she paused; then bunglingly enounced:

“But Roan Frost knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the red-room.”

Mr. Jackson a second time produced his snuff-box.

“Don’t you think Azgeda Hall a very beautiful house?” he asked. “Are you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at?”

“It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here than a servant.”

“Pooh! You can’t be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid place?”

“If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can never get away from Azgeda till I am a woman.”

“Perhaps you may – who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs. Frost?”

“I think not, sir.”

“None belonging to your father?”

“I don’t know. I asked Aunt Frost once, and she said possibly I might have some poor, low relations called Griffin; but she knew nothing about them.”

“If you had such, would you like to go to them?”

Clarke reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices; poverty for Clarke was synonymous with degradation.

“No; I should not like to belong to poor people,” was her reply.

“Not even if they were kind to you?”

She shook her head. Clarke could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women she saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Azgeda; no, Clarke was not heroic enough to purchase freedom at the price of a caste.

“But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people?”

“I cannot tell. Aunt Frost says if I have any, they must be a beggarly set; I would not like to go begging.”

“Would you like to go to school?”

Again Clarke reflected. She scarcely knew what school was. Becca sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore back-boards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise; Roan Frost hated his school, and abused his master; but Roan Frost’s tastes were no rule for Clarke’s, and if Becca’s accounts of school discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to Azgeda) were somewhat appalling, her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were, Clarke thought, equally attractive. She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs they could sing, and pieces they could play, of purses they could net, of French books they could translate; till Clarke’s spirit was moved to emulation as she listened. Besides, school would be a complete change; it implied a long journey, an entire separation from Azgeda, an entrance into a new life.

“I would, indeed, like to go to school,” was the audible conclusion of Clarke’s musings.

“Well, well; who knows what may happen?” Mr. Jackson said, as he got up. “The child ought to have a change of air and scene,” he added, speaking to himself; “nerves not in a good state.”

Becca now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling up the gravel-walk.

“Is that your mistress, nurse?” Mr. Jackson asked; “I would like to speak with her before I go.”

Becca invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way out. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Frost, the apothecary ventured to recommend Clarke to be sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt readily enough adopted; for, as Abbot said, in discussing the subject with Becca, when both sat sewing in the nursery on night, after Clarke was in bed, and, as they thought, asleep, “Missis was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand.” Abbot, Clarke thinks, gave her credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.

On that same occasion she learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot’s communications to Becca, that her father had been a poor clergyman; that her mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who considered the match beneath her; that Clarke’s grandfather Frost was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that after Clarke’s mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent; that her mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other.

Becca, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, “Poor Miss Clarke is to be pitied, too, Abbot.”

“Yes,” responded Abbot; “if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one readily cannot care for such a little toad as that.”

“Not a great deal, to be sure,” agreed Bessie; “at any rate, a beauty like Miss Ontari would be more moving in the same condition.”

“Yes, I dote on Miss Ontari!” cried the fervent Abbot. “Little darling, with her long curls and her green eyes, and such a sweet color as she has; just as if she were painted! Becca, I would fancy a Welsh rabbit for supper.”

“So could I – with a roast onion. Come, we’ll go down.” They went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know the drill, come send me asks and stuff @ forest-blue.tumblr.com


	4. Keep in good health

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nia gets a visitor. We see some of that Clarke Griffin temper. We're getting much closer to the chapter where Clarke meets Lexa. (gods help me I don't know what I'll write then)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took me a while to write this chapter because the original was just so. damn. long. Also, be warned: there's quite a few mentions of christianity and the bible in here. Nothing homophobic or anything, but just thought I'd let you guys know.

From her discussion with Mr. Jackson, and from the above-reported conference between Becca and Abbot, Clarke gathered enough hope to suffice as a motive for wishing to get well: a change seemed near – she wanted and waited for it in silence. It dragged on, however; days and weeks passed; Clarke had regained her normal state of health, but no new allusion was made to the subject over which she brooded. Mrs. Frost surveyed her at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed her. Since Clarke’s illness she had drawn a more marked line of separation between the girl and her own children; appointing Clarke a small room to sleep in by herself, condemning her to take her meals alone, and pass all her time in the nursery, while her cousins were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint, however, was dropped about sending Clarke to school; still, Clarke felt an instinctive certainty that Nia would no longer endure her under the same roof; for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on Clarke, expressed an insuperable and rooted aversion.

Echo and Ontari, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to her as little as possible. Roan thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw her, and once attempted chastisement; but as Clarke instantly turned against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which had roused her temper before, he thought it better to desist, and ran from her uttering execrations and vowing Clarke had burst his nose. She had indeed levelled at that prominent feature a blow as hard as she could inflict; and when she saw that either that or her look daunted him, Clarke had the greatest inclination to follow up her advantage to purpose; but he was already with his mother. She heard him in a blubbering tone commence the tale of how “that nasty Clarke Griffin” had flown at him like a mad cat; he was stopped rather harshly-

“Don’t talk about her like that, Roan; I told you not to go near her; she is not worthy of notice; I do not wish either you or your sisters to associate with her.”

Here, leaning over the banister, Clarke cried out suddenly and without at all deliberating her words,

“They are not fit to associate with me.”

Mrs. Frost was rather a stout woman, but, on hearing this strange and audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stairs, swept Clarke like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing her down on the edge of her bed, dared her in an emphatic voice to rise from that place or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day.

“What would uncle Frost say to you if he were alive?” was Clarke’s scarcely voluntary demand. She says scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if her tongue pronounced words without her will consenting to their utterance; something spoke out of her over which Clarke had no control.

“What?” Nia asked, under her breath. Her usually cold, composed gray eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from Clarke’s arm and gazed at the girl as if she really did not know whether she was child or fiend. Clarke was now in for it.

“My uncle Frost is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can papa and mamma; they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead.”

Nia soon rallied her spirits: she shook Clarke most soundly; she slapped both her ears, and then left her without a word. Becca supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour’s length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that Clarke was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof. Clarke half believed her; for she felt indeed only bad feelings surging in her breast.

November, December, and half of January passed away. Christmas and the New Year had been celebrated at Azgeda with the usual festive cheer; presents had been interchanged, dinners and evening parties given. From every enjoyment Clarke was, evidently, excluded; her share of the celebration consisted in witnessing the daily appareling of Echo and Ontari, and seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringleted; and afterwards, in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footmen, to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room doors opened and closed. When tired of this occupation, Clarke would retire from the stair-head to the solitary and silent nursery: there, though somewhat sad, she was not miserable. To speak the truth, she had not the least wish to go into company, for in company she was very rarely noticed; and if Becca had but been kind and companionable, Clarke would have deemed it a treat to spend the evenings quietly with her, instead of passing them under the formidable eye of Nia Frost, in a room full of ladies and gentlemen. But Becca, as soon as she had dressed her young ladies, used to take herself off to the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper’s room, generally bearing the candle along with her. Clarke then sat with her doll on her knee, till the fire got low, glancing around occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than herself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers sunk to a dull red, she undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as best as she could, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in her bed. To this bed she always took her doll. Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, Clarke contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow.

Long did the hours seem while she waited the departure of the company, and listened for the sound of Becca’s steps on the stairs. Sometimes the nurse would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or perhaps to bring Clarke something by way of supper – a bun or a cheesecake; then she would sit on the bed while Clarke ate it, and when the blonde finished she would tuck the clothes around her; and twice she kissed her and said, “Good night, Miss Clarke.” When thus gentle, Becca seemed to her the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and Clarke wished most intensely that Becca would always be so pleasant and amiable, and never push her about, or scold, or task her unreasonably, as she was too often wont to do. Becca must, Clarke thinks, have been a girl of good natural capacity; for she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack for narrative: so, at least, Clarke judges from the impression made on her by Becca’s nursery tales. She was pretty, too, if Clarke’s recollections of her face and person are correct. Clarke remembers her as a slim young woman, with black hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear complexion; but she had a capricious and hasty temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or justice: still, such as she was, Clarke preferred her to anyone else at Azgeda Hall.

It was the 15th of January, about nine o’clock in the morning: Becca was gone down to breakfast; Clarke’s cousins had not yet been summoned to their mother; Echo was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she was fond; and not less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money she thus obtained. She had a turn for trade, and a marked propensity for saving, shown not only in the selling of eggs and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that functionary having orders from Mrs. Frost to buy of his young lady all the products of her garden she wished to sell; and Echo would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a handsome profit thereby. As to her money, she first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but, some of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaids, Echo, fearful of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to entrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of interest – fifty or sixty per cent – which interest she exacted every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy.

Ontari sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and interweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic. Clarke was making her bed, having received strict orders from Becca to get it arranged before she returned, (for Becca now frequently employed the little blonde as a sort of under nursery maid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, &co.). Having spread the quilt and folded her night-dress, Clarke went to the window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll’s house furniture scattered there; an abrupt command from Ontari to let her playthings alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were her property) stopped Clarke’s proceedings; and then, for lack of other occupation, she fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through which she could look out on the grounds, where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard frost.

From the window were visible the porter’s lodge and the carriage road, and just as Clarke had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes as left room to look out, she saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through. She watched it ascending the drive with indifference: carriages often came to Azgeda, but none ever brought visitors in whom Clarke was interested; it stopped in front of the house, the door-bell rung loudly, the newcomer was admitted. All this being nothing to Clarke, her vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement. The remains of Clarke’s breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, she was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the windowsill, when Becca came running upstairs into the nursery.

“Miss Clarke, take off your pinafore: what are you doing there? Have you washed your hands and face this morning?” Clarke gave another tug before she answered, because she wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash yielded; she scattered the crumbs, some on the windowsill, some on the cherry-tree bough; then, closing the window, she replied:

“No, Becca; I have only just finished dusting.”

“Troublesome, careless child! And what are you doing now? You look quite red, as if you had been about some mischief: what were you opening the window for?”

Clarke was spared the trouble of answering, for Becca seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled the blonde to the washstand, inflicted a merciless, but, happily, brief scrub on Clarke’s face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined her head with a bristly brush, denuded her of her pinafore, and then hurrying her to the top of the stairs, bid Clarke go down directly, as she was wanted in the breakfast-room.

Clarke would have asked who wanted her; she would have demanded if Mrs. Frost was there; but Becca was already gone, and had closed the nursery door upon her; she slowly descended. For nearly three months, Clarke had never been called to Nia Frost’s presence: restricted so long to the nursery, the breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms became to her awful regions, on which it dismayed her to intrude.

She now stood in the empty hall; before her was the breakfast-room door, and she stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little coward had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of Clarke in those days! She feared to return to the nursery; she feared to go forward to the parlor; ten minutes she stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided for her; she _must_ enter.

“Who could want me?” she asked inwardly, as with both hands she turned the stiff door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted her efforts. “What should I see besides Aunt Frost in the apartment – a man, or a woman?” The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and courtseying low, Clarke looked up at – a black pillar! – such, at least, appeared to her, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug; the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital.

Mrs. Frost occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to Clarke to approach; the girl did so, and Nia introduced her to the stony stranger with these words: “This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you.”

 _He_ , for it was a man, turned his bald head slowly towards where Clarke stood, and having examined her with the two inquisitive-looking gray eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said, solemnly, and in a bass voice: “Her size is small; what is her age?”

“Ten years.”

“So much?” was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny some minutes. Presently he addressed Clarke.

“Your name, little girl?”

“Clarke Griffin, sir.”

In uttering these words, she looked up; he seemed to her a tall gentleman; but then she was very little; his features were large, and they and all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim.

“Well, Clarke Griffin, and are you a good child?”

Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative – Clarke’s little world held a contrary opinion – she was silent. Mrs. Frost answered for her by an expressive shake of her head, adding soon, “Perhaps the less said on that subject the better, Mr. Titus.”

“Sorry indeed to hear it! She and I must have some talk;” and, bending from the perpendicular, he installed his person in the armchair, opposite Mrs. Frost’s. “Come here,” he said.

Clarke stepped across the rug; he placed her square and straight before him. What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with hers! What a great nose! And what a mouth! And what large, prominent teeth!

“No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,” he began, “especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?”

“They go to hell,” was Clarke’s ready and orthodox answer.

“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”

“A pit full of fire.”

“And would you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there forever?”

“No, sir.”

“What must you do to avoid it?”

Clarke deliberated a moment. Her answer, when it did come, was objectionable. “I must keep in good health, and not die.”

“How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die daily. I buried a little child of five years old, only a day or two since – a good little child, whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the same could not be said of you, were you to be called hence.”

Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, Clarke only cast her eyes down on the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing herself far enough away.

“I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent ever having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress.”

“Benefactress! Benefactress!” Clarke said, inwardly. “They all call Mrs. Frost my benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing.”

“Do you say your prayers night and morning?” continued the interrogator.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you read your Bible?”

“Sometimes.”

“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”

“I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.”

“And the Psalms? I hope you like them.”

“No, sir.”

“No! Oh, shocking! I have a little boy younger than you, who knows six psalms by heart; and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat, or a verse of a psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh, the verse of a psalm! Angels sing psalms,’ says he; ‘I wish to be a little angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.”

“Psalms are not interesting,” Clarke remarked bitterly.

“That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to change it – to give you a new and a clean one – to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Clarke was about to ask a question, touching the manner in which that operation of changing her heart was to be performed, then Mrs. Frost interposed, telling her to sit down; the woman then proceeded to carry on the conversation herself.

“Mr. Titus, I believe I intimated, in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I would wish. Should you admit her into Trigeda school, I would be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault – a tendency to deceit. I mention this in your hearing, Clarke, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr. Titus.”

Well might Clarke dread – well might she dislike Mrs. Frost, for it was her nature to wound Clarke cruelly. Never was Nia happy in her presence. However carefully she obeyed, however strenuously she strove to please the woman, her efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above. Now, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut her to the heart. She dimly perceived that Nia was already obliterating hope from the new phase of existence which she destined Clarke to enter; the blonde felt, though she could not have expressed the feeling, that Mrs. Frost was sewing aversion and unkindness along her future path. She saw herself transformed, under Mr. Titus’s eye, into an artful, noxious child, and what could she do to remedy the injury?

“Nothing, indeed,” thought Clarke, as she struggled to repress a sob, and hastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of her anguish.

“Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child,” said Mr. Titus; “it is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone. She shall, however, be watched, Mrs. Frost. I will speak to Miss Green and the teachers.”

“I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,” continued the benefactress; “to be made useful, to be kept humble. As for the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at Trigeda.”

“Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam,” returned Mr. Titus. “Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly appropriate to the pupils of Trigeda. I, therefore, direct that especial care shall be bestowed on its cultivation among them. I have studied how best to mortify them in the worldly sentiment of pride, and, on the other day, I had a pleasing proof of my success. My second daughter, Augusta, went with her mother to visit the school, and on her return exclaimed: ‘Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls at Trigeda look! With their hair combed behind their ears, and their long pinafores, and those little cloth pockets outside their frocks – they are almost all like poor people’s children!’ and, said she, ‘they looked at my dress and mamma’s as if they had never seen a silk gown before.’”

“This is the state of things I quite approve,” said Mrs. Frost. “Had I sought all England over, I could scarcely have found a system more exactly fitting a child like Clarke Griffin. Consistency, my dear Mr. Titus; I advocate consistency in all things.”

“Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Trigeda; plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants.”

“Quite right, sir. I may, then, depend upon this child being received as a pupil at Trigeda, and there being trained in conformity to her position and prospects?”

“Madam, you may; she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants; and I trust she will show herself grateful to the inestimable privilege of her election.”

“I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Titus; for, I assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too irksome.”

“No doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning. I shall return to Titus Hall in the course of a week or two; my good friend, the archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him sooner. I shall send Miss Green notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there will be no difficulty about receiving her. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Titus; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Titus, and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Titus.”

“I will, madam. Little girl, here is a book entitled the _Child’s Guide_ : read it, with prayer, especially that part containing an ‘account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G., a naughty child, addicted to falsehood and deceit.’”

With these words, Mr. Titus put into Clarke’s hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover; and having rung for his carriage, he departed.

Mrs. Frost and Clarke were left alone; some minutes passed in silence; the woman was sewing, Clarke was watching her. Mrs. Frost might be, at that time, some six or seven-and-thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese. She had a somewhat large face, the under-jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of truth; her constitution was sound as a bell; illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household and tenants were thoroughly under her control; her children only, at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire.

Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her armchair, Clarke examined her figure; she perused her features. In her hand Clarke held the tract, containing the sudden death of the liar; to which narrative her attention had been pointed to as an appropriate warning. What had just passed – what Mrs. Frost had said concerning Clarke to Mr. Titus – the whole tenor of their conversation was recent, raw, and stinging in her mind; she had felt every word as acutely as she had heard it plainly; and a passion of resentment fermented now within her.

Mrs. Frost looked up from her work; her eye settled on Clarke’s, her fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements.

“Go out of the room; return to the nursery,” was her mandate. Clarke’s look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme, though suppressed, irritation. Clarke got up, she went to the door, she came back again; she walked to the window, across the room, and then close up to the woman.

 _Speak_ she must; she had been trodded on severely, and _must_ turn; but how? What strength did Clarke have to dart retaliation at her antagonist? She gathered her energies and launched them in this blunt sentence:

“I am not deceitful; if I were, I would say I loved _you_ ; but I declare I do not love you; I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except Roan Frost; and this book about the liar, you may give it to your girl, Ontari, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.”

Mrs. Frost’s hands still lay on her work inactive; her eye of ice continued to dwell freezing on Clarke’s:

“What more have you to say?” she asked, rather in the tone of which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child.

That eye of hers, that voice, stirred every antipathy Clarke had. Shaking from head to toe, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, Clarke continued:

“I am glad you are no relation of mine; I will never call you aunt again as long as I live; I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if anyone asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”

“How dare you affirm that, Clarke Griffin?”

“How dare I, Mrs. Frost? How dare I? Because it is the _truth_. You think I have no feelings, and that I can live without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so; and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back – roughly and violently thrust me back into the red-room, and locked me up there – to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, ‘Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Frost!’ And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me – knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions. This exact tale. People think you a good woman; but you are bad-hard-hearted. _You_ are deceitful!”

Before she had finished this reply, Clarke’s soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, she ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that she had struggled out into unhoped-for freedom. Not without cause was this sentiment; Mrs. Frost looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as if she would cry.

“Clarke, you are under a mistake; what is the matter with you? Why do you tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?”

“No, Mrs. Frost.”

“Is there anything else you wish for, Clarke? I assure I desire to be your friend.”

“Not you. You told Mr. Titus I had a bad character, a deceitful disposition; and I’ll let everybody at Trigeda know what you are, and what you have done.”

“Clarke, you don’t understand these things; children must be corrected for their faults.”

“Deceit is not _mine_!” Clarke cried out in a savage, high voice.

“But you are passionate, Clarke; that you must allow; and now return to the nursery, there’s a dear, and lie down a little.”

“I am not your dear; I cannot lie down; send me to school soon, Mrs. Frost, for I hate to live here.”

“I will indeed send her to school soon,” murmured Mrs. Frost; and gathering up her work, she abruptly left the room.

Clarke was left there alone, winner of the field. It was the hardest battle she had fought, and the first victory she had gained. She stood a while on the rug, where Mr. Titus had stood, and enjoyed her conqueror’s solitude. First, she smiled to herself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in her as fast as did the accelerated throb of her pulse. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as Clarke had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as she had given hers, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of Clarke’s mind when she accused and menaced Mrs. Frost; the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as accurately her subsequent condition, when half an hour’s silence and reflection had shown her the madness of her conduct, and the dreariness of her hated and hating position.

Something of vengeance she had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed on swallowing, warm and flavorful; its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave Clarke a sensation as if she had been poisoned. Willingly she would have gone and asked Mrs. Frost’s pardon; but she knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse Clarke with double scorn, thereby reigniting every turbulent impulse of Clarke’s nature.

She would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find some nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of somber indignation. Clarke took a book, some Arabian tales; she sat down and endeavored to read. She could not make sense of the subject; her own thoughts swam always between her and the page she had always found fascinating. She opened a glass door in the breakfast-room; the shrubbery was quite still; the black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds. She covered her head and arms with the skirt of her frock, and went out to walk in a part of the garden which was quite isolated; but she found no pleasure in the silent trees, the fallen fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together. She leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty field, where no sheep were feeding, where the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very gray day; a most opaque sky canopied all; snowflakes fell at intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting. Clarke stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to herself over and over again, “What shall I do? What shall I do?”

All at once she heard a clear voice call, “Miss Clarke! Where are you? Come to lunch!”

It was Becca, Clarke knew well enough; but she did not stir; the woman’s light step came tripping down the path.

“You naughty little thing!” she said. “Why don’t you come when you are called?”

Becca’s presence now, compared with the thoughts over which Clarke had been brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat cross. The fact is, after her conflict with, and victory over, Mrs. Frost, she was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid’s transitory anger; and she _was_ disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart. Clarke just put her two arms around her, and said, “Come, Becca! Don’t scold.”

The action was more frank and fearless than any Clarke was used to indulge in; somehow it pleased Becca.

“You are a strange child, Miss Clarke,” she said, as she looked down at the girl; “a little, roving, solitary thing; and you are going to school, I suppose?”

Clarke nodded.

“And you won’t be sorry to leave poor Becca?”

“What does Becca care for me? She is always scolding me.”

“Because you’re such a queer, frightened, shy little thing. You should be bolder.”

“What! To get more knocks?”

“Nonsense! But you are rather put upon, that’s certain. My mother said, when she came to see me last week, that she would not like a little one of her own to be in your place. Now come in, and I’ve some good news for you.”

“I don’t think you have, Becca.”

“Child! What do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well! But missis and the young ladies and Master Roan are going out to tea this afternoon, and you shall have tea with me. I’ll ask the cook to bake you a little cake, and then you shall help me to look over your drawers; for I am soon to pack your trunk. Missis intends you to leave Azgeda in a day or two, and you shall choose what toys you like to take with you.”

“Becca, you must promise not to scold me anymore until I go.”

“Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don’t be afraid of me. Don’t start when I chance to speak rather harshly; it’s so provoking.”

“I don’t think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Becca, because I’ve got used to you; and I shall soon have another set of people to dread.”

“If you dread them they’ll dislike you.”

“As you do, Becca?”

“I don’t dislike you, miss; I believe I am fonder of you than all the others.”

“You don’t show it.”

“You little sharp thing! You’ve got quite a new way of talking. What makes you so venturesome and hardy?”

“Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides-“ Clarke was going to say something about what had passed between her and Mrs. Frost; but on second thought she considered it better to remain silent on that head.

“And so you are glad to leave me?”

“Not at all, Becca; indeed, just now I am rather sorry.”

“Just now! And rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I dare say now, if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn’t give it me; you’d say you would _rather_ not.”

“I’ll kiss you and welcome; bend your head down.” Becca stooped; they mutually embraced, and Clarke followed her into the house feeling quite comforted. That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Becca told her some of the most enchanting stories, and sung her some of her sweetest songs. Even for Clarke life had its gleams of sunshine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Clarke is finally going to school! Yay. If you have something you'd like to see regarding Clexa interactions at school, hit me up. I could use some inspiration. As always, you can find me @ forest-blue.tumblr.com


	5. Goodbye to Azgeda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke's first day of school. We learn some new names. Also, a mysterious brown-haired girl appears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! These chapters are quite longer than the first few of the book, so that's why it takes me longer to update. You'd be surprised, but my hands start to hurt after a while so I have to take a break.  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Five o’clock had hardly struck on the morning of January 19th, when Becca brought a candle into Clarke’s room and found her already up and nearly dressed. Clarke had risen half an hour before the nurse’s entrance, and had washed her face and put on her clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting, whose ray streamed through the narrow window of her little room. She was to leave Azgeda that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates at 6am. Becca was the only person yet risen; she had lighted a fire in the nursery, where she now proceeded to make Clarke breakfast. Few children can eat when excited with the thoughts of a journey; nor could Clarke. Becca, having pressed her in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled milk and bread she had prepared, wrapped up some biscuits in a paper and put them in Clarke’s bag; then she helped the blonde put on her cloak and bonnet, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, she and Clarke left the nursery. As they passed Mrs. Frost’s bedroom, she said, “Will you go in and bid missis goodbye?”

“No, Becca; she came to my bed last night, when you were gone down to supper, and said I need not disturb her in the morning, or my cousins either; and she told me to remember that she had always been my best friend, and to speak of her and be grateful to her accordingly.”

“What did you say, miss?”

“Nothing; I covered my face with the bedsheet, and turned from her to the wall.”

“That was wrong, Miss Clarke.”

“It was quite right, Becca; your missis has not been my friend; she has been my foe.”

“Oh, Miss Clarke! Don’t say so!”

“Goodbye to Azgeda!” cried Clarke, as they passed through the hall and went out the front door.

The moon was set, and it was very dark; Becca carried a lantern, whose light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent thaw. Raw and chill was the winter morning; Clarke’s teeth chattered as she hastened down the drive. There was a light in the porter’s lodge; when they reached it they found the porter’s wife just kindling her fire: Clarke’s trunk, which had been carried down the evening before, stood corded at the door. It wanted but a few minutes of six, and shortly after that hour had struck, the distant roll of wheels announced the coming coach; Clarke went to the door and watched its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom.

“Is she going by herself?” asked the porter’s wife.

“Yes.”

“And how far is it?”

“Fifty miles.”

“What a long way! I wonder Mrs. Frost is not afraid to trust her so far alone.”

The coach drew up; there it was at the gates, with its four horses and its top laden with passengers. The guard and coachman loudly urged haste; Clarke’s trunk was hoisted up; she was taken from Becca’s neck, to which she clung with kisses.

“Be sure to take good care of her,” Becca cried to the guard, as he lifted Clarke into the carriage.

“Ay, ay!” was the answer: the door was clapped to, a voice exclaimed “All right,” and on they drove. Thus was Clarke severed from Becca and Azgeda; thus whirled away to unknown, and, as she then deemed, remote and mysterious regions.

Clarke remembers little of the journey. She only knows that the day seemed of a preternatural length, and that they appeared to travel over hundreds of miles of road. They passed through several towns, and in one – a very large one – the coach stopped; the horses were taken out, and the passengers alighted to dine. Clarke was carried into an inn, where the guard wanted her to have some dinner; but, as she had no appetite, he left her in an immense room with a fireplace at each end, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments. Here Clarke walked about a long time, feeling very strange, and mortally apprehensive of someone coming in and kidnapping her; for she believed in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently figured in Becca’s fireside chronicles. At last the guard returned; once more she was stowed away in the coach, her protector mounted in his own seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away they rattled of the “stony street” of Tondc.

The afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty; as it waned into dusk, Clarke began to feel that they were getting far indeed from Azgeda. They ceased to pass through towns; the country changed; great gray hills heaved up round the horizon: as twilight deepened, they descended a valley, dark with wood, and long after night had overclouded the prospect, Clarke heard a wild wind rushing among trees.

Lulled by the sound, she at last dropped asleep. Clarke had not long slumbered when the sudden cessation of motion awoke her; the coach-door was thrown open, and a person like a servant was standing at it; Clarke saw her face and dress by the light of the lamps.

“Is there a little girl called Clarke Griffin here?” she asked. Clarke answered, “Yes,” and was then lifted out; her trunk was handed down, and the coach instantly drove away.

Clarke was stiff with long sitting, and bewildered with the noise and motion of the coach: gathering her faculties, she looked about her. Rain, wind, and darkness filled the air; nevertheless, she dimly discerned a wall before her, and a door open in it; through this door she passed with her new guide; the woman shut and locked it behind her. There was now visible a house or houses – for the building spread far – with many windows, and lights burning in some; they went up a broad, pebbly path, splashing wet, and were admitted at a door; then the servant led Clarke through a passage into a room with a fire, where she left her alone.

Clarke stood and warmed her numbed fingers over the blaze, then looked around; there was no candle, but the uncertain light from the hearth showed by intervals papered walls, carped, curtains, shining mahogany furniture; it was a parlor, not so spacious or splendid as the drawing-room at Azgeda, but comfortable enough. Clarke was trying to make out the subject of a picture on the wall, when the door opened, and an individual carrying a light entered; another followed close behind.

The first was a tall lady, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a large forehead; her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl, her countenance was grave, hear bearing erect.

“The child is very young to be sent alone,” she said, putting her candle down on the table. She considered the blonde attentively for a minute or two, then further added:

“She had better be put to bed soon – she looks tired. Are you tired?” she asked, placing her hand on Clarke’s shoulder.

“A little, ma’am.”

“And hungry, too, no doubt; let her have some supper before she goes to bed, Miss Luna. Is this the first time you have left your parents to come to school, my little girl?”

Clarke explained to her that she had no parents. The woman enquired how long they had been dead; then, how old was Clarke, what was her name, whether she could read, write, and sew a little; then she touched her cheek gently with her forefinger, and saying, “I hope you will be a good child,” dismissed Clarke along with Miss Luna.

The lady Clarke had left might have been about twenty-nine; the one who went with her appeared some years younger; the first impressed Clarke by her voice, look and air. Miss Luna was more ordinary; ruddy in complexion, though of a careworn countenance; hurried in gait and action, like one who had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand; she looked, indeed, what Clarke had afterward found she really was, an under-teacher. Led by her, Clarke passed from compartment to compartment, from passage to passage, of a large and irregular building; till, emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house they had traversed, they came upon the hum of many voices, and presently entered a wide, long room, with a great tables, two at each end, on each of which burned a pair of candles, and, seated all around on the benches, a congregation of girls of every age from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number appeared countless to Clarke, though not exceeding eighty in reality; they were uniformly dressed in brown woolen frocks of quaint fashion, and long Holland pinafores. It was the hour of study; they were engaged in conning over their tomorrow’s task, and the hum Clarke had heard was the combined result of their whispered repetitions.

Miss Luna signaled for Clarke to sit on a bench near the door, then walking up to the top of the long room, she cried out:

“Monitors, collect the lesson-books and put them away!”

Four tall girls arose from different tables, and going round, gathered the books and removed them. Miss Luna again gave the word of command:

“Monitors, fetch the supper trays!”

The tall girls went out, and returned presently, each bearing a tray, with portions of something, Clarke knew not what, arranged thereon, and a pitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray. The portions were handed round; those who liked took a draught of the water, the mug being common to all. When it came to Clarke’s turn, she drank, for she was thirsty, but did not touch the food, excitement and fatigue rendering her incapable of eating; she now saw, however, that it was a thin oaten cake, shared into fragments.

The meal over, prayers were read by Miss Luna, and then classes filed off; two and two, upstairs. Overpowered by this time with weariness, Clarke scarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was, except that, like the school-room, she saw it was very long. Tonight she was to be Miss Luna’s bed-fellow; the woman helped her undress. When laid down, Clarke glanced at the long rows of beds, each of which was quickly filled with two occupants; in ten minutes the single light was extinguished; amid silence and complete darkness, Clarke fell asleep.

The night passed rapidly; Clarke was too tired even to dream; she only once awoke, to hear the wind rave in furious gusts, and the rain fall in torrents, and to be sensible that Miss Luna had taken her place by Clarke’s side. When she again opened her eyes, a loud bell was ringing, the girls were up and dressing, day had not yet begun to dawn, and a rush-light or two burned in the room. Clarke, too, rose reluctantly; it was bitter cold, and she dressed as well as she could for shivering, and washed, when there was a basin at liberty, which did not occur soon, as there was but one basin to six girls, on the stands down the middle of the room. Again the bell rung; all formed in file, two and two, and in that order descended the stairs and entered the cold and dimly-lighted school-room; here prayers were read by Miss Luna; afterward she called out:

“Form classes!”

A great tumult succeeded for some minutes, during which Miss Luna repeatedly exclaimed, “Silence!” and “Order!”. When it subsided, Clarke saw them all drawn up in four semicircles, before four chairs, placed at the four tables; all held books in their hands, and a great book, like the Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat. A pause of some seconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum of numbers; Miss Luna walked from class to class, hushing this indefinite sound.

A distant bell tinkled. Immediately three ladies entered the room; each walked to a table and took her seat; Miss Luna assuming the fourth vacant chair, which was that nearest the door, and around which the smallest of the children were assembled; to this inferior class Clarke was called, and placed at the bottom of it.

Business now began. The day’s prayer was repeated, then certain texts of Scripture were said, and to these succeeded a protracted reading of chapters in the Bible, which lasted an hour. By the time that exercise was done, day had fully dawned. The indefatigable bell now sounded for the fourth time; the classes were marshalled, and marched into another room to breakfast. How glad Clarke was to behold a prospect of getting something to eat! She was now nearly sick from hunger, having taken so little the day before.

The refectory was a great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to Clarke’s dismay, sent forth an odor far from inviting. She saw a universal manifestation of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those destined to swallow it. From the van of the procession, the tall girls of the first class, rose the whispered words:

“Disgusting! The porridge is burned again!”

“Silence!” ejaculated a voice – not that of Miss Luna, but of one of the upper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed but of somewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top of one table, while a more buxom lady presided at the other. Clarke looked in vain for the one she had first seen the night before – she was not visible. Miss Luna occupied the foot of the table, where Clarke sat, and a strange, foreign-looking, elderly man, the French teacher, as Clarke afterward found, took the corresponding seat at the other board. A long grace was said, and a hymn sung; then a servant brought in some tea for the teachers, and the meal began.

Ravenous, and now very faint, Clarke devoured a spoonful or two of her portion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger blunted, she perceived she had got in hand a nauseous mess. Burned porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it. The spoons were moved slowly. Clarke saw each girl taste her food and try to swallow it, but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished. Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted. Thanks being returned for what they had not gotten, and a second hymn chanted, the refectory was evacuated for the school-room. Clarke was one of the last to go out; and, in passing the tables, she saw one teacher take a basin of the porridge and taste it. She looked at the others; all their countenances expressed displeasure, and one of them, the stout one, whispered:

“Abominable stuff! How shameful!”

A quarter of an hour passed before lessons again begun, during which the school-room was in a glorious tumult. For that space of time it seemed to be permitted to talk loud and more freely, and they used their privilege. The whole conversation ran on the breakfast, which one and all abused roundly. Poor things! It was the sole consolation they had. Miss Luna was not the only teacher in the room; a group of great girls standing around her, spoke with serious and sullen gestures. Clarke heard the name of Mr. Titus pronounced by some lips; at which Miss Luna shook her head disapprovingly; but she made no great effort to check the general wrath; doubtless she shared in it.

A clock in the school-room struck nine; Miss Luna left her circle, and, standing in the middle of the room, cried:

“Silence! To your seats!”

Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamor of tongues. The upper teachers now punctually resumed their posts; but still, all seemed to wait. Ranged on benches down the sides of the room, the eighty girls sat motionless and erect; a quaint assemblage they appeared, all with plain locks combed from their faces, not a curl visible; in brown dresses, made high and surrounded by a narrow scarf around the throat, with little pouches of Holland (shaped something like a Highlander’s purse) tied in front of their frocks and destined to serve the purpose of a work-bag; all, too, wearing woolen stockings, and country-made shoes fastened with brass buckles. Above twenty of those clad in this costume were full-grown girls, or rather, young women; it suited them ill, and gave an air of oddity even to the prettiest.

Clarke was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the teachers – none of whom precisely pleased her; for the stout one was a little coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh and grotesque, and Miss Luna, poor thing, looked purple, weather-beaten, and overworked – when, as Clarke’s eye wandered from face to face, the whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by a common spring.

What was the matter? Clarke had heard no order given; she was puzzled. Just as she gathered her wits, the classes were again seated; but as all eyes were now turned to one point, hers followed the general direction, and encountered the personage who had received her last night. The woman stood at the bottom of the long room, on the hearth; for there was a fire at each end: she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and gravely. Miss Luna approaching, seemed to ask her a question, and, having received her answer, went back to her place, and said aloud,

“Monitor of the first class, fetch the globes!”

While the direction was being executed, the lady consulted moved slowly up the room. Clarke supposes she has a good eye, for she retains yet the sense of admiring awe with which her eyes tracked the woman’s steps. Seen now, in broad daylight, she looked tall, fair, and shapely; brown eyes, with a benignant light in their irises, and a fine penciling of long lashes around, relieved the whiteness of her large forehead; on each of her temples her hair, of a very dark brown, was clustered in round curls, according to the fashion of those times, when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets were in vogue; her dress, also in the mode of the day, was of purple cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black velvet; a gold watch shone at her girdle. Let the reader add, to complete the picture, refined features; a complexion, if pale, clear; and a stately air and carriage, and they will have, at least as clearly as words can give it, a correct idea of the exterior of Miss Green – Costia Green, as Clarke afterwards saw the name written in a prayer-book entrusted to her to carry to church.

The superintendent of Trigeda (for such was this lady) having taken her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the first class around her, and commenced giving a lesson in geography; the lower classes were called by the teachers; repetitions in history, grammar, &co., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss Green to some of the elder girls. The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock, which at last struck twelve. The superintendent rose:

“I have a word to address to the pupils,” she said.

The tumult of cessation from the lessons was already breaking forth, but it sunk at her voice. She went on:

“You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must be hungry; I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all.”

The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise.

“It is to be done on my responsibility,” she added, in an explanatory tone to them, and left the room immediately afterwards.

The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to the high delight and refreshment of the whole school. The order was now given, “To the garden!” Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with strings of colored calico, and a cloak of gray frieze. Clarke was similarly equipped, and, following the stream, she made her way into the open air.

The garden was a wide enclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of prospect. A covered veranda ran down on one side, and broad walks bordered a middle space, divided into scores of little beds. These beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate, and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers, they would, doubtless, look pretty; but now, at the latter end of January, all was wintry blight and brown decay. Clarke shuddered as she stood and looked around. It was an inclement day for outdoor exercise – not positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling, yellow fog. All underfoot was still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday. The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games; but sundry pale and thin ones herded together, for shelter and warmth, in the veranda; and among these, as the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames, Clarke heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough.

As yet, she had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice of her. She stood lonely enough; but to that feeling of isolation Clarke was accustomed; it did not oppress her much. She leaned against a pillar of the veranda, drew her gray mantle close to herself, and trying to forget the cold which nipped at her, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed within, delivered herself up to the employment of watching and thinking. Her reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit record; she hardly yet knew where she was. Azgeda and her past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable distance; the present was vague and strange, and of the future she could form no conjecture. She looked around the convent-like garden, and then, up at the house – a large building, half of which seemed gray and old, the other half quite new. The new par, containing the school-room and dormitory, was lighted by mullioned and latticed windows, which gave it a church-like aspect; a stone tablet over the door bore this inscription:

“Trigeda Institution. This portion was rebuilt by Naomi Titus, of Titus Hall, in this county. ‘Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’ – St. Matt. V. 16.”

Clarke read those words over and over again. She felt that an explanation belonged to them, and was unable to fully penetrate their import. She was still pondering the signification of “Institution”, and endeavoring to make out a connection between the first words and the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a cough close behind her made her turn her head. Clarke saw a brown-haired girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent. From where Clarke stood she could see the title – it was _Rasselas_ , a name that struck Clarke as strange, and consequently attractive. In turning a page, the girl happened to look up, and Clarke said to her directly,

“Is your book interesting?” the blonde had already formed the intention of asking her to lend it to her someday.

“I like it,” she answered, after a pause of a second or two, during which she examined Clarke.

“What is it about?” Clarke continued. She hardly knows where she found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was contrary to her nature and habits; but the girl’s occupation must have touched a chord of sympathy somewhere; for Clarke, too, liked reading, though of a frivolous and childish kind; she could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.

“You may look at it,” replied the girl, offering Clarke the book.

Clarke did so; a brief examination convinced her that the contents were less taking than the title. _Rasselas_ looked dull to her trifling taste. She saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety seemed spread over the closely printed pages. Clarke returned the book; the girl received it quietly, and without saying anything, she was about to relapse into her forms studious mood; again Clarke ventured to disturb her – “Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door means? What is Trigeda Institution?”

“This house where you have come to live.”

“And why do they call it Institution? Is it in any way different from other schools?”

“It is partly a charity-school. You and I, and all the rest of us, are charity-children. I suppose you are an orphan. Are not either your father or your mother dead?”

“Both died before I can remember.”

“Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, and this is called an Institution for educating orphans.”

“Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing?”

“We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each.”

“Then why do they call us charity-children?”

“Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the deficiency is supplied by subscription.”

“Who subscribes?”

“Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighborhood and in London.”

“Who was Naomi Titus?”

“The lady who built the new part of this house, as that tablet records, and whose son overlooks and directs everything here.”

“Why?”

“Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment.”

“Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a watch, and who said we were to have some bread and cheese?”

“To Miss Green? Oh, no! I wish it did. She has to answer to Mr. Titus for all she does. Mr. Titus buys all our food and all our clothes.”

“Does he live here?”

“No – two miles off, at a large hall.”

“Is he a good man?”

“He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good.”

“Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Green?”

“Yes.”

“And what are the other teachers called?”

“The one with the red cheeks is called Miss Cartwig; she attends to the work, and cuts out – for we make our own clothes, our frocks, and pelisses, and everything. The little one with black hair is Miss Indra; she teaches history and grammar, and hears the second class repetitions: and the one who wears a shawl, and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to his side with a yellow ribbon, is Monsieur Jaha; he comes from Lisle, in France, and teaches French.”

“Do you like the teachers?”

“Well enough.”

“Do you like the little black one, and the Monsieur- ? – I cannot pronounce the name as you do.”

“Miss Indra is hasty – you must take care not to offend her; Monsieur Jaha is not a bad sort of person.”

“But Miss Green is the best – isn’t she?”

“Miss Green is very good, and very clever; she is above the rest, because she knows far more than they do.”

“Have you been long here?”

“Two years.”

“Are you an orphan?”

“My parents are dead.”

“Are you happy here?”

“You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough for the present; now I want to read.”

But at that moment the summons sounded for dinner: all reentered the house. The odor which now filled the refectory was scarcely more appetizing than that which had regaled their nostrils at breakfast; dinner was served in two huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a strong steam redolent of rancid fat. Clarke found the mess to consist of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rancid meat, mixed and cooked together. Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was apportioned to each pupil. Clarke ate what she could, and wondered whether every day’s fare would be like this.

After dinner they immediately adjourned to the school-room: lessons recommenced, and were continued till five o’clock.

The only marked event of the afternoon was that Clarke saw the girl with whom she had talked in the veranda dismissed in disgrace, by Miss Indra, from a history class, and sent to stand in the middle of the large school-room. Clarke expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but, to her surprise, the girl neither wept nor blushed. Composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes. “How can she bear it so quietly – so firmly?” Clarke asked herself. “Were I in her place, it seems to me I would wish the earth to open and swallow me up. She looks as if she were thinking of something beyond her punishment – beyond her situation; of something not around her nor before her. I have heard of daydreams – is she in a daydream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I am sure they do not see it – her sight seems turned in, gone down into her heart. She is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not at what is really present. I wonder what sort of a girl she is.”

Soon after 5pm, they had another meal, consisting of a small mug of tea and half a slice of brown bread. Clarke devoured her bread and drank her tea with relish; but she would have been glad of as much more – she was still hungry. Half an hour’s recreation succeeded, then study; then the glass of water and the piece of oat-cake, prayers, and bed. Such was Clarke’s first day at Trigeda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeere's Lexa! Well, I mean we don't know her name yet, but in the next chapter for sure! I have to warn you, though, I have two assignments due at the end of this week, and my mom is coming to visit me (because my birthday is next week) so I'll be pretty busy. I'll do my best to update, but I can't promise anything earlier than next week.  
> In the meantime, leave comments or come ask me stuff @forest-blue.tumblr.com  
> I love hearing from you guys!


	6. Blood must have blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke's second day at school. Indra is severe. Lexa is stoic. Clarke is bewildered by Lexa's behavior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand I'm back! Sorry for being away so long, but after the essays, my mom came to visit me because my birthday was on the 28th, so I didn't really have time to write. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this new chapter! (also, I'm so sorry for all those semicolons, they're everywhere)

The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by rushlight, but this morning they were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing: the water in the pitchers was frozen. A change had taken place in the weather the prior evening, and a keen north-east wind, whistling through the crevices of the bedroom windows all night long, had made the girls shiver in their beds, and turned the contents of the ewers to ice.

Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible reading was over, Clarke felt ready to perish from the cold. Breakfast came at last, and this morning the porridge was not burned; the quality was eatable, the quantity small. How small Clarke’s portion seemed! She wished it had been double.

In the course of the day, Clarke was enrolled a member of the fourth class, and she was assigned regular tasks and occupations. As yet she had only been a spectator of the proceedings at Trigeda – she was now to become an actor therein. At first, being little accustomed to learn by heart, the lessons appeared to Clarke both long and difficult; the frequent change from task to task, too, bewildered her; and she was glad when, about three o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Cartwig put into Clarke’s hands a border of muslin, two yards long, together with needle, thimble, &co., and sent her to sit in a quiet corner near Miss Indra’s chair reading, and all was quiet, the subject of their lessons could be heard, together with the manner in which each girl acquitted herself, and the criticism or praise of Miss Indra on the performance. It was English history. Among the readers, Clarke observed the girl from the veranda; at the commencement of the lesson, the brunette’s place had been at the top of her class, but for some error of pronunciation or some inattention to punctuation, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that obscure position, Miss Indra continued to make her an object of constant notice; she was continually addressing to her such phrases as the following:

“Woods” (such it seems was her name; the girls there were all called by their surnames, as boys were elsewhere), “Woods, you are standing on the side of your shoe; turn your toes out immediately.” “Woods, you poke your chin out most unpleasantly; draw it in.” “Woods, I insist on holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that attitude,” and many others in the same vein.

A chapter having been read through twice, the books were closed and the girls examined. The lesson had comprised part of the reign of Charles I, and there were varied questions about tonnage and poundage, and ship-money, which most of them appeared unable to answer; still, every little difficulty was solved instantly when it reached Woods; her memory seemed to have retained the substance of the whole lesson, and she was ready with answers on every point. Clarke kept expecting Miss Indra would praise the girl’s attention; but, instead of that, she suddenly cried out:

“You dirty, disagreeable girl! You have not cleaned your nails this morning!”

Woods made no answer; Clarke wondered at her silence.

“Why”, Clarke thought, “does she not explain that she could neither clean her nails nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?”

Clarke’s attention was now called off by Miss Cartwig desiring her to hold a skein of thread. While the lady was winding it, she talked to Clarke from time to time, asking whether she had ever been to school before, whether she could embroider, stitch and knit; till she dismissed her, Clarke could not pursue her observations on Miss Indra’s movements. When she returned to her seat, said teacher was just delivering an order, which Clarke did not hear; but Woods immediately left the class, and, going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Indra with a respectful courtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, undid her dress, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to the brunette’s eye; and, while Clarke paused from her sewing, because her fingers shook at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of Woods’ pensive face altered its ordinary expression.

“Hardened girl!” exclaimed Miss Indra, “nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits; carry the rod away.”

Woods obeyed. Clarke looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek.

The play-hour in the evening Clarke thought the pleasantest fraction of the day at Trigeda; the bit of bread, the draught of tea swallowed at five o’clock, had revived vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger; the long restraint of the day was slackened; the school room felt warmer than in the morning; its fires being allowed to burn a little more brightly, to supply, in some measure, the place of candles, not yet introduced; the ruddy twilight, the licensed uproar, the confusion of many voices, gave one a welcome sense of freedom.

On the evening of the day on which Clarke had seen Miss Indra flog her pupil Woods, she wandered as usual among the forms and tables and laughing groups, without a companion, yet not feeling lonely; when she passed the windows she now and then lifted a blind and looked out; it snowed fast; a drift was already forming against the lower panes; putting her ear close to the window, Clarke could distinguish, from the gleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside.

Probably, if she had left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when she would most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind would have saddened her heart; the obscure chaos would have disturbed her peace; as it was, Clarke derived from both a strange excitement, and, reckless and feverish, she wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamor.

Jumping over forms and creeping under tables, she made her way to one of the fireplaces; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, Clarke found the girl – Woods – absorbed, silent, abstracted from all around her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.

“Is it still _Rasselas_?” Clarke asked, coming behind her.

“Yes,” she said, “and I have just finished it.”

And in five more minutes more she closed the book. Clarke was glad of it.

“Now,” Clarke thought, “I can perhaps get her to talk.” She sat down next to the brunette on the floor.

“What is your name besides Woods?”

“Lexa.”

“Do you come a long way from here?”

“I come from a place further north – quite on the borders of Scotland.”

“Will you ever go back?”

“I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future.”

“You must wish to leave Trigeda?”

“No; why should I? I was sent to Trigeda to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object.”

“But that teacher, Miss Indra, is so cruel to you!”

“Cruel? Not at all. She is severe; she dislikes my faults.”

“And if I were in your place I would detest her; I would resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I would get it from her hand, and I would break it under her nose.”

“Probably you would do nothing of the sort; but if you did, Mr. Titus would expel you from the school; that would be a great grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a pain which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose consequences will extend to all connected with you – and, besides, we are to return good for evil.”

“But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl;” Clarke paused, “ _I_ certainly could not bear it,” she added as an afterthought.

“Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it. It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”

Clarke listened to Lexa in wonder. She could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance; and still less could she understand or sympathize with the restraint Lexa expressed for her chastiser. Clarke felt as if Lexa considered things by a light invisible to the blonde’s eyes. She suspected that Lexa might be right and she wrong; but Clarke would not ponder the matter deeply; she put it off to a more convenient season.

“You say you have faults, Lexa; what are they? To me you seem very good.”

“Then learn from me not to judge by appearances. I am, as Miss Indra said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot _bear_ to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very provoking to Miss Indra, who is naturally neat, punctual, and particular.”

“And cross and cruel,” Clarke added; but Lexa would not admit her addition; she kept silent.

“Is Miss Green as severe to you as Miss Indra?”

At the utterance of Miss Green’s name, a soft smile flitted over Lexa’s grave face.

“Miss Green is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to anyone, even the worst in the school; she sees my errors, and tells me of them gently; and, if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives me my reward liberally. One strong proof of my defective nature is that even her criticisms, so mild, so rational, have no influence to cure me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value it most highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight.”

“That is curious,” Clarke said, “it is so easy to be careful.”

“For you, I have no doubt it is. I observed you in your class this morning, and saw you were closely attentive; your thoughts never seemed to wander while Miss Luna explained the lesson and questioned you. Now, mine continually rove away: when I should be listening to Miss Indra, and collecting all she says with assiduity, I often lose the very sound of her voice; I fall into a sort of dream. Sometimes I think I am in Trikru, and that the noises I hear around me are the bubbling of a little brook near our house; then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I have to be wakened; and, having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the visionary brook, I have no answer ready.”

“But you replied so well this afternoon!”

“It was mere chance: the subject on which we had been reading had interested me. This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Trikru, I was wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles I sometimes did; and I thought what a pity it was that, with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no further than the prerogatives of the crown. If he had but been able to distance himself, and see how what they call the spirit of the age was tending! Still, I like Charles – I respect him – I pity him, poor murdered king. Yes, his enemies were the worst; they shed blood they had no right to shed. How dared they kill him!”

Lexa was talking to herself; she had forgotten Clarke could not understand her very well – that the blonde was ignorant, or nearly so, of the subject she discussed. Clarke recalled her to her level.

“And when Miss Green teaches you, do your thoughts wander then?”

“No, certainly, not often; because Miss Green has generally something to say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain.”

“Well, then, with Miss Green you are good?”

“Yes, in a passive way; I make no effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness.”

“A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, so they would never alter, but grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should – so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.”

“Hm. You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older; as yet, you are an untaught girl.”

“But I feel this, Lexa; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.”

“Savage tribes hold that doctrine of blood must have blood, not civilized nations.”

“How? I don’t understand.”

“It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”

“What then?”

“Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.”

“Then I should love Mrs. Frost, which I cannot do; I should bless her son Roan, which is impossible.”

In her turn, Lexa asked Clarke to explain; the blonde proceeded forthwith to pour out, in her own way, the tale of her suffering and resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited, she spoke as she felt, without reserve or softening. Lexa listened patiently until the end. Clarke expected her to then make a remark, but she said nothing.

“Well,” she asked impatiently, “Is not Mrs. Frost a hardhearted, bad woman?”

“She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because, you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Indra does mine. But how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the bad emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world; but the time will come when we shall put them off in death; when only the spark of the spirit will remain, the impalpable principle of life and thought, pure as in the moment of creation: whence it came it shall return – perhaps again to be communicated to some higher being than man. Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend. No, I cannot believe that; I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling; for it extends hope to all; eternity becomes a rest – a home, not a terror. Besides, with this creed, I can clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can thus sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last; with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end.”

Lexa’s head, always drooping, sunk a little lower as she finished this sentence. Clarke saw by her look that Lexa no longer wished to talk to her, but rather to converse with her own thoughts. The brunette was not allowed much time for meditation; a monitor, a great rough girl, presently came up, exclaiming in a strong accent:

“Lexa Woods, if you don’t go and put your drawer in order, and fold up your work this minute, I’ll tell Miss Indra to come and look at it!”

Lexa sighed as her thoughts were interrupted, and getting up, obeyed the monitor without reply as without delay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp, now in the next chapters I'll have to edit a lot more than just small bits of dialogue from the original. We'll be seeing more of Clarke and Lexa at Trigeda, and how their relationship changes in time (and also, a cool scene where Clarke is being sneaky). If there's anything in particular you'd like to see, comment here with your suggestion or send me an ask over at forest-blue.tumblr.com


	7. Pedestal of infamy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Titus visits the school. The pedestal of infamy appears. Lexa smiles at Clarke. Explosions happen. 
> 
> Just kidding about that last part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, I apologize for not updating during the weekend! I just bought a ps4 and I was busy playing Horizon Zero Dawn (and reading something for uni) so I procrastinated. I was a bit wary about writing this chapter, because I knew that after this one comes the part where I really have to start improvising, and it's kind of terrifying to know that I'll have to emulate a certain style while coming up with interesting ideas to keep the story going. So I'm asking for your help: please send any suggestions for Clexa interactions during their following school years. I have a few ideas, but I'll probably need more. Leave them here as comments, or send asks on forest-blue.tumblr.com  
> Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Clarke’s first quarter at Trigeda seemed an age; and not the golden age, either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in getting herself accustomed to new rules and unfamiliar tasks. The fear of failure in these points harassed her worse than the physical hardships she had to endure; though the latter were no trifles.

During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented their stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these limits they had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Their clothing was insufficient to protect them from the severe cold. They had no boots; the snow got into their shoes and melted there; their ungloved hands became numb and covered with chilblains, as were their feet; Clarke remembers the distracting irritation she endured from this cause well, every evening when her feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw and stiff toes into her shoes in the morning. The scanty supply of food was distressing. With the keen appetites of growing children, they had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse which pressed hardly on the younger pupils; whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion. Many times, Clarke had shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time; and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of her mug of tea, she had swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret fears, forced from her by the exigency of hunger.

Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. The girls had to walk two miles to the church, where their patron officiated; they set out cold, they arrived at church colder; during the morning service, they became almost paralyzed. It was too far to return for dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same poor proportion observed in their ordinary meals, was served around between the services.

At the close of the afternoon service, they returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from their faces.

Clarke can remember Miss Green walking lightly and rapidly along their drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging them, by precept and example, to keep up their spirits, and march forward, as she said, “like stalwart soldiers”. The other teachers were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.

How they longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when they got back! But, to the little ones at least, this was denied; each hearth in the school-room was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups, wrapping their frozen arms around themselves.

A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread, a whole instead of a half slice, with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter; it was the weekly treat to which they all looked forward from Sunday to Sunday. Clarke generally contrived to reserve a portion of this bounteous meal for herself, but the remainder she was invariably obliged to part with.

The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, many chapters of the Bible; and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Luna, whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent interlude to these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half dozen little girls; who, overpowered by sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form. The remedy was to thrust them forward into the center of the school-room, and force them to stand there till the sermon was finished. Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sunk together in a heap; they were then propped up with the monitors’ high stools.

Clarke was relieved for Mr. Titus’s absence; indeed, the gentleman was away from home during the greater part of the first month after Clarke’s arrival – perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend the archdeacon. Clarke need not say that she had her reasons for dreading his coming; but come he did at last.

One afternoon (she had been almost a month at Trigeda), as she was sitting with a slate in her hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, Clarke’s eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just passing; she recognized, almost instinctively, that gaunt outline; and when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, rose together, it was not necessary for Clarke to look up to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured the school-room, and presently beside Miss Green, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which had frowned at Clarke so ominously from the hearth-rug at Azgeda. She glanced at this piece of architecture. Yes, she was right; it was Mr. Titus, buttoned up in an overcoat, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever.

She had her reasons for being dismayed at his visit; too well she remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Frost about Clarke’s disposition; the promise pledged by Mr. Titus to apprize Miss Green and the teachers of the blonde’s vicious nature. All along Clarke had been dreading the fulfillment of this promise; she had been looking out daily for the man, whose information respecting her past life was to brand her a bad child forever; now there he was. He stood at Miss Green’s side; he was speaking low in her ear; Clarke did not doubt he was making disclosures of her villainy, and she watched Miss Green’s eyes with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see them turn on her with a glance of repugnance and contempt. She listened, too; and as she happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, she caught most of what he said; its import relieved Clarke from immediate apprehension.

“I suppose, Miss Green, the thread I bought at Louwoda will do; it struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico chemises, and I sorted the needles to match. You may tell Miss Cartwig that I forgot to make a memorandum of the darning-needles, but she shall have some papers sent in next week; and she is not, on any account, to give out more than one at a time for each pupil; if they have more, they are apt to be careless and lose them. And, oh! I wish the woolen stockings were better looked to! When I was here last I went into the kitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying on the line; there was a quantity of black hose in a very bad state of repair; from the size of the holes in them I was sure they had not been well mended from time to time.”

He paused.

“Your directions shall be attended to, sir,” said Miss Green.

“And,” he continued, “the laundress tells me some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week; it is too much; the rules limit them to one.”

“I think I can explain that circumstance, sir. Fox and Harper McIntyre were invited to take tea with some friends at Louwoda last Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the occasion.”

Mr. Titus nodded.

“Well, for once it may pass; but please do not let the circumstance occur too often. And there is another thing which surprised me; I find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch, consisting of bread and cheese, has twice been served out to the girls during the past fortnight. How is this? I look over the regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? And by what authority?”

“I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir,” replied Miss Green; “the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner time.”

“Madam, allow me an instant! You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or over-dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralized by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and subverting the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under the temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of martyrs, to the exhortations of our blessed Lord himself, calling upon his disciples to take up their cross and follow him; to his warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God; to his divine consolations, ‘If ye suffer hunger or thirst for my sake, happy are ye’. Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burned porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!”

Mr. Titus again paused – perhaps overcome by his feelings. Miss Green had looked down when he first began to speak to her, but she now gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be also assuming the coldness and fixity of that material, especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor’s chisel to open it, and her eyes settled gradually into petrified severity.

In the meantime, Mr. Titus, standing on the hearth with his hands behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school. Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil; turning, he said, in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used,

“Miss Green, what – _what_ is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, curled – curled _all over_?” And extending his cane, he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so.

“It is Zoe Monroe,” replied Miss Green, very quietly.

“Zoe Monroe! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly – here, in an evangelical charitable establishment – as to wear her hair one mass of curls?”

“Zoe’s hair curls naturally,” returned Miss Green, still more quietly.

“Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these girls to be the children of grace; and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Green, that girl’s hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber tomorrow; and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence; that tall girl, tell her to turn around. Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall.”

Miss Green passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them; she gave the order, however, and when the first class could take in what was required of them, they obeyed. Leaning back on her bench, Clarke could see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this maneuver; it was a pity Mr. Titus could not see them too; he would, perhaps, have felt that, whatever he might do with their outward appearance, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.

He scrutinized the backs of these living statues for about five minutes, then pronounced the sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom:

“All those top-knots must be cut off.”

Miss Green seemed to object.

“Madam,” he pursued, “I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world; my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety – not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted, of-“

Mr. Titus was here interrupted; three other visitors, ladies, now entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner, to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had gray beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich-plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful hat fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled. The elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls.

These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Green, as Mrs. And the Misses Titus, and conducted to seats of honor at the top of the room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the rooms upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, questioning the laundress, and lecturing the superintendent. They now proceeded to address numerous remarks and reproofs to Miss Cartwig, who was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories; but Clarke had no time to listen to what they said; other matters called off and enchained her attention.

Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Titus and Miss Green, she had not, at the same time, neglected precautions to secure her own safety; which she thought would be effected, if she could only elude observation. To this end, she had set well back on the form, and while seeming to be busy with her sum, had held her slate in such a manner as to conceal her face. She might have escaped notice, had not her treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from her hand, and falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon her. Clarke knew that it was all over now; and, as she stooped to pick up the two fragments of slate, she rallied her forces for the worst. It came.

“A careless girl!” said Mr. Titus, and immediately after – “It is the new pupil, I perceive.” And before Clarke could draw breath, “I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her.” Then aloud – how loud it seemed to Clarke! – “Let the child who broke her slate come forward!”

Of her own accord Clarke could not have stirred; she was paralyzed. But the two great girls who sat on each side of her set her on her legs and pushed the blonde towards the dreaded judge, and then Miss Green gently assisted her to his very feet; Clarke caught the woman’s whispered counsel.

“Don’t be afraid, Clarke; I saw it was an accident. You shall not be punished.”

The kind whisper went to her heart like a dagger.

“Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite,” Clarke thought; and an impulse of fury against Frost, Titus and Co. bounded in her blood at the conviction. She was no Lexa Woods.

“Fetch that stool,” said Mr. Titus, pointing to a very high one, from which a monitor had just risen. It was brought.

“Place the child upon it.”

And Clarke was placed there, by whom she did not know. She was in no condition to note particulars. She was only aware that they had hoisted her up to the height of Mr. Titus’s nose; that he was within a yard of her, and that a spread of shot orange and purple silk cloaks, and a cloud of silvery plumage, extended and waved below her.

Mr. Titus cleared his throat.

“Ladies,” said he, turning to his family, “Miss Green, teachers, and children, you all see this girl?”

Of course they did; for Clarke felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses against her scorched skin.

“You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that he has given to us all; no signal deformity points her out as a marked character. Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.”

A pause – in which she began to steady her nerves, and to feel that the moment when something could be done had passed; and that the trial, no longer to be shirked, must be firmly sustained.

“My dear children,” pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos, “this is a sad, melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn you that this girl, who might be one of God’s own lambs, is a little castaway; not a member of the true flock, but evidently and interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her from your conversations. Teachers, you must watch her; keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinize her actions, punish her body to save her soul; if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl – this child - is a liar!”

Now came a pause of five minutes; during which Clarke, by this time in perfect possession of her wits, observed all the female Tituses produce their handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the younger ones whispered, “How shocking!”

Mr. Titus resumed.

“This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity, the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful lest her vicious example contaminate their purity. She was sent here to be healed; and teachers, superintendent, I beg of you not to allow the waters to stagnate around her.”

With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Titus adjusted the top button of his overcoat, muttered something to his family, who rose, bowed to Miss Green, and then all the great people sailed in a state from the room. Turning at the door, Clarke’s judge said,

“Let her stand half an hour longer on that stool, and let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day.”

There she was, then, mounted aloft; Clarke, who had said she could not bear the shame of standing on her feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. How she felt, no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling her breath and constricting her throat, a girl came up and passed her; in passing, she lifted her green eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through Clarke! How the new feeling bore her up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. Clarke suppressed her rising tears, raised her head, and took a firm stand on the stool. Lexa Woods asked some slight question about her work of Miss Carwig, was chided for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at Clarke as she again went by. What a smile! It was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lighted up Lexa’s marked jaw, her thin face, her sparkling green eyes, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment she wore on her arm the “untidy badge”. Scarcely an hour ago, Clarke had heard Lexa be condemned by Miss Indra to a dinner of bread and water, because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the imperfect nature of man – such spots are there on the disk of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Indra’s can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lexa's smile! Honestly, I totally agree with Clarke's reaction to Lexa's smile; I'm lowkey in love with that smile. Anyway, don't forget to leave suggestions for the following chapters (no really, if you don't inspire me, it'll take me longer than usual to update)  
> See you guys next weekend (or Monday)!


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